Some LiveJournal tips and tricks

[vakkotaur]

Many already know, but not everyone. Thus this.

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One of the best things a person can do for themselves is write up LiveJournal entries, at least the lengthier ones, in a text editor (such as NotePad) and copy the text into LJ. That way if something goes wrong, it goes wrong with the copy and the original can be saved and posted later when LJ is behaving itself again - without having to re-type it all.

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This is inside an "lj-cut" which allows things to be a bit out of the way. It's recommended for longer posts, or posts with pictures, or just stuff you might want to warn some folks about so they know what they're getting into, Here's how it's done:

<lj-cut text="In no particular order...">

"Hidden" text goes here.

</lj-cut>

And here is where non-hidden text resumes.

If nothing else, it will be appreciated if this is done for quiz results. Often the graphics for them load painfully slowly, if at all, and it slows everything down. If that's behind a cut, it only gets slow when someone is more likely to be expecting it.

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That dividing line is just an html horizontal rule, done by: <hr>

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It might be more useful to some if a listed LJ username is a link. That is, rather than simply say Vakkotaur, one might prefer vakkotaur. How it's done: <lj user="vakkotaur">

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Something not immediately obvious is that such a link is really two links. The name is a link to my journal (or to whoever's journal) entries. The tiny graphic in front of the name is a link to the user information (interests, friends, friend-of, and such).

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Another thing that isn't obvious is that the default icon, if any, on the user information page is a link. Clicking on this link leads to a page showing all the icons for that user.

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LiveJournal, being on the web, uses HTML. This means that some characters might not be displayed as expected. Most of the time this is not a problem. For things with < and > it can be a problem. Something as simple as <Vakkotaur> would seem to disappear. So how did it just display? A bit of substitution:

&lt;Vakkotaur&gt; Oh, and &amp; is how to display & without it triggering the substitution.

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There is a way to get a mood listed that isn't in the list and still have a little mood graphic with it. Rather than just use the "none/other" choice, select the mood with the graphic desired and then type in the mood in the "other" field. The result will use that graphic with the typed word.

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I've almost certainly left out a few things. Most likely someone will post a followup about them.

Comments

[frostyw.livejournal.com]

A couple of things:

<lj user="..."> works for communities and syndicated feeds as well. There used to be an lj comm argument, but in the interests of simplicity since the namespaces don't collide, LJ collapsed it into a single argument, and it dynamically renders the right info icon when the article is posted.

You don't need to substitute & for &amp; unless you're trying to mimic an HTML entity. If the browser doesn't know the entity, it will render the text as-is. Granted, it's probably better to just use &amp; to be future-proofed.

The latter note about the moods is a relatively new LJ feature, and a number of clients still haven't been updated to take advantage of it. Those changes will need to be made on the LJ web site after the article is posted.

HTH. HAND. ;)

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

Yup, whenever I want to write anything longer than just a quick note, I write it in Notepad and save often, to c:/LiveJournal/current.txt. This file gets overwritten whenever I start a new post, but I never need to actually look at it unless something goes wrong (which is rare).

[aedifica]

Thanks! There's some there that I knew, but also some I didn't.